Stage five was a cracker! It had a little bit of everything, and the finale certainly set the pulse racing.

I was pretty chuffed when my pre-race prediction for the day, the young Belgian Philippe Gilbert, got into an early four man break.

The last 10 kilometres saw some great attacking, madcap descending and a strong ride from Alexandre Vinokourov, who really had to push hard to limit his losses after a bad fall which saw him leave a hefty chunk of buttock somewhere on the road to Autun.

The Astana man ended up losing 1’20” on his rivals but afterwards Levi Leipheimer (Discovery Channel) reckoned it could have been worse.

What really struck me on Thursday, though, was the incredible guts displayed by a man who crossed the line three quarters of an hour after the winner.

Geoffroy Lequatre, a 26 year old Frenchman with not a single career victory to his name since turning pro in 2004, was my rider of the day.

With around 70km to go, Lequatre came off heavily just after the feed zone. It looked like he’d got his musette (food bag) tangled up in his spokes.

Despite his obvious discomfort by the side of the road, we all managed to have a chuckle about poor old Geoffroy being brought down by his own sandwiches.

The cameras didn’t linger on him too long and we were quickly taken back to the action at the front of the race. The Cofidis rider was soon forgotten.

Having packed up our equipment at the end of our broadcast, we were just leaving when Graham pointed out that there was still a rider on the course.

The crowd had dwindled away and not many people were there to witness the single bravest moment of stage five, 44 minutes after stage winner Filippo Pozzato nosed across the line and 21 minutes after the penultimate finisher.

His face contorted with agony, shorts ripped to shreds, thigh looking like a side of meat, and fingertips all stripped of skin, Lequatre crossed the line and simply collapsed in tears. These are tough, tough boys here.